Expanding the possibilities
of performance


SummerWorks Performance Festival
August 1-11, 2024

Jordan is wearing a navy blue suit jacket and black shirt. His hair is black with shaved sides and short curly hair on top, a few tendrils falling onto his forehead. Jordan’s facial hair; a full beard and mustache, is dark brown/black. He is sitting in front of a navy suede background. Photo credit: Sandro Pehar

THE POP-UP EXPERIENCE : A New Black Poet

Interdisciplinary / Pop-up / Theatre


Presented in partnership with Outside the March and in association with Stratford Festival Lab


Venue
The Pop-Up Shop - 1282 Bloor Street West


August 27, 7.30pm

August 28th, 4pm

August 28, 7.30pm

August 29, 3pm (ASL)


45 Minutes


Ticket Price
Free

Get Tickets
Jordan is wearing a navy blue suit jacket and black shirt. His hair is black with shaved sides and short curly hair on top, a few tendrils falling onto his forehead. Jordan’s facial hair; a full beard and mustache, is dark brown/black. He is sitting in front of a navy suede background. Photo credit: Sandro Pehar

Langston Hughes’ ashes are buried under the floor of the New York Public Library beneath a mosaic engraved with lines from his poetry. Elijah, an aspiring poet who has taken to wandering the stacks alone after hours, has visited this engraving many times repeating the lines “my soul has grown deep like the rivers”. One evening, after a difficult birthday, Langston Hughes comes to him as if in a dream. And so begins A New Black Poet.

A New Black Poet is a love letter from the living to the dead. It is a celebration of the poets Bill Gunn, Jean Toomer, Lorraine Hansberry, Toni Morrison, Ishmael Reed, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison and Gill Scott Heron. Throughout The Pop-Up Experience, Jordan Laffrenier will be working in collaboration with Co-Conspirator and Multidisciplinary Composer and Musician Beau Dixon, Co-Director Aaron Jan, designer Echo Zhou and  choreographer Shakeil Rollock, to explore setting some of the poems of Langston Hughes to music, and the immersive potential of modelling this piece off of a series of academic lectures.

As part of the SummerWorks Lab Residencies this year, four artists/collectives from Outside the March’s  TD Forward March program will take over pop-up storefront spaces. If you want a glimpse into the artistic process, stop by 1282 Bloor Street West between August 23 – 29, where you’ll be able to engage in the creative process and peek through the windows to watch the Forward March artists at work throughout the month of August.

Writer/Creator — Jordan Laffrenier

Director — Aaron Jan

Composer — Beau Dixon

Designer — Echo Zhou

Choreographer/Movement Director/Performer — Shakeil Rollock

Performer — Dante Prince

TD Forward March is supported by TD Bank Group through the TD Ready Commitment.


See information about the other projects from The Pop-Up Experience below.

The Pop-Up Experience: The Children of the Bear

The Pop-Up Experience: PORTAL

The Pop-Up Experience: Rainbow on Mars


ASL icon

The Pop-Up Experience is an indoor experience with a small capacity of distanced audience members who must remain masked at all times. There will be up to 20 people distanced in the space at any time.

Unfortunately there is no on-site audience washroom. The space is wheelchair accessible.

A limited number of tickets are reserved for audience members who use American Sign Language for the Sunday August 29, 3:00PM performance. If you require ASL interpretation please email boxoffice@summerworks.ca to reserve one of these tickets.

If you have further access questions you can get in touch with our access team at outreach@summerworks.ca.


Part of the SummerWorks Lab programming – a place for exploration, experimentation, and process. In the Lab, you can experience new works in development from artists exploring new possibilities in performance.


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